Giselle Arryus-Revidi: «Like the one who felt his value»

We are far from equal in our ability to like other people. Why some of us are endowed with special charm, and the look does not stop at others? The opinion of a psychoanalyst.

Interview with Giselle Arryus-Roididi

Giselle Arryus-Roevidi (Gisèle Harrus-Révidi) is a psychoanalyst, the author of several popular books, one of the latter is “Seduction: the end of the myth” (“Seduction, La Fin D’N MyThe”, Payot, 2007).

Psychologies: Charm – congenital quality?

Giselle Arryus-Roididi: No, although a child from a very early age is pleasure when he feels that others like people. You probably noticed that some children have special charm: they should look at us, and we are immediately touched. But their charm is explained not so much by physical attractiveness as the ability to make contact: pretty children can attract benevolent attention. Why do they like to like? It’s all about mother. The child becomes charming because his mother likes his body, his smell. Mother’s gaze makes us attractive because it supports our narcissistic component, the very vital energy that gives an impetus to the development of personality. A person gains the ability to like due to the fact that in his life there was a time when he felt like the center of the universe, believed in his omnipotence. This faith gives us a feeling of its own value, uniqueness. It is also very important that our environment happily accepts the signs of love from us.

We gain the ability to like only thanks to that time of our life when we felt omnipotent.

Who often suffers from the lack of ability to attract sympathy?

AND. A-r.: Often in this position is the average child in the family, whom parents, too busy than the older and younger, pay less attention. This can be a girl who was born when parents dreamed of a son (for example, if there were already two daughters in the family), or a boy who was born in a similar situation. The children and mother of which are still not enough growing up to distract from themselves and see their child’s child. To feel the right to captivate others, we need a look that distinguishes us and makes it possible to feel that we are unique. But if the mother treats the child as an exceptional essence – I mean the only child who is admired, no matter what he does, then, becoming an adult, he will be so confident in his own irresistibility that he simply does not consider it necessary to make efforts to make his efforts to make it possibleSomeone like it.

The seduction of the new century

It does not mean to charm, Giselle Arryus-Ruvidi is sure. If the charm has changed little over the past decades, then sexual seduction has to be invented again.

Where bashful virgins have gone, who attracted our great -grandfathers? Where the exciting seduction of the female body? It was enough to see the tip of the shoe so that the imagination would finish the rest … But there were no more secrets left. “Today, in order to like men, you need to be similar to the shyness of silicone breasts thin to the transparency, which have worked for a lot of plastic surgeons,” Gizel Arryus-Roids complains. Mozartovsky Don Juan chose to die rather than refuse to seduce, and this became the highest manifestation of his freedom. But the writer Michelle Welbek declares in his novels that he is already sick of his body as a sexual object, and tries to convince us that “sexy” is a curse. In contrast to the sophisticated “diary of the seducer” of the philosopher Kierkegaard (ABC-classic, 2008) in “Sexy Life of Catherine M.»(Limbus press, 2004) writer Katrin Mille flares up her intimate life in all details, letting us understand that for her a man comes down to the genitals. Plunged into the Internet space, we have become consumers of relations, turning another person into an object. Will our age of consumption will forever destroy the language of seduction? This does not threaten us yet, the psychoanalyst assures. But the seduction of the 21st century we have yet to invent.

How to replenish this shortage of charm?

AND. A-r.: A “disliked” person always has to prove his own value to others and again and again to make sure of her himself. But they explain to us that the ability to like, seduce is a matter of profit. Women’s magazines offer techniques, recipes, and special trainings. But is it a genuine charm? Hard to say! Now, if at the trainings they taught to be interested in their interlocutor, listen to him. Who knows, maybe something good would have come out!

Is the inability to like to be associated with a neurosis?

AND. A-r.: The fact that a person considers himself unable to like is rarely described as a nervous disorder, although there are a lot of such people. Seduce, attract attention – all these are natural components of our relationship. And if they are blocked by the conviction “I can’t like anyone”, then this, I think, can already be called personal pathology. Such a person closes himself as an outcast, a loser, thereby unconsciously confirming the correctness of his mother, who most likely once looked at him with an empty or bored look. He does not look after himself, dresses so as not to attract attention, because he is sure: in any case, no one

is interested in. Often he suffers from a strong feeling of guilt and doubts whether the right to exist at all. He usually speaks very quietly so that no one to interfere with anyone. Such a person thinks about the mysterious charm, which is endowed with others and which he believes, only he is deprived of one. “If I am an empty place for my own mother,” he says to himself, then for the rest and even more so. «. In my practice, I met such sensations even in adults, whose social life has developed at first glance quite successfully.

And if you look from the other side: what childhood a person had with an aggravated need to like others?

AND. A-r.: I think that he survived the conflict between the too early development of his sexuality and extremely gesture parental prohibitions. He could not cope with the uncontrolled and incomprehensible excitement. And at the same time he felt that in relations with his parents he became a passive object. The prohibitions did not structure his libido, but suppressed and blocked. I like it for such a person means to violate the prohibition. This is an unconscious strategy aimed at combating the attitudes of the father and mother.

Seducer collecting love victories. Manipulator that benefits from its attractiveness. The mysterious charm of a fateful woman. That in common between three of these phenomena?

To seduce another means to deceive him to some extent, to eliminate it into a trap, albeit unconsciously. The professional seducer always misleads regarding his intentions. And the manipulator, trying to charm, deceives us with respect to the “goods” that he advertises: reality will always be paler than the seductive image inspired by us. Seduction must certainly be accompanied by a halo of secrets. Fatal women, for example, are seduced in silence: in their society you can indulge in fantasies and imagine anything you want.